Decoding App Engagement and Monetization

Wade Erickson (00:00):

Welcome all to another episode of Tech Leaders Unplugged. I'm Wade Erickson, and my guest today is Francesca Gargaglia. She is the co-founder and CEO of Amity. And today our topic is decoding app engagement and monetization making money. We all like to talk about that. So welcome Francesca, lovely to have you here sharing your insights and your company's background and what you guys are doing over there. And yeah, for quick, real quick, just introduce yourself a little bit about Amity and then we'll jump into the topic.

Francesca Gargaglia (00:51):

Sure. Hi everybody, and thank you for thank you for having me. I am I'm very excited about being here. So, as you said, I'm co-founder and Co-CEO of Amity. Amity is a, is a tech company, and we enable brands to, you know, increase engagement and revenue and retention on their own apps by adding pre social features and unlocking AI insights. So this is pretty much you know, very quick description of our product.

Wade Erickson (01:24):

Great. And a little bit about you. Of course, for an American, I hear a bit of an accent. Tell me a little bit about the world travel you are with the different locations. It's interesting to have European guests on the show.

Francesca Gargaglia (01:39):

Sure. I'm very it's almost impossible to hide my accent. Not, not withstanding, I've been living abroad for many years now, but I am obviously from Italy. So I was I, I come from a Italian town called in the, in the center of Italy. And I, I've been, you know, living in many, many countries over the last 10 15 years. So I, I guess my journey started in university because I studied in Milan, but I had the opportunity to intern and in general, like, experience various, you know, short term international travel and, and, you know, working and living in other countries. And this really it just clicked with me. I think I, I started to, you know, make traveling and exploring different cultures, a very big part of my, of my life. And this is also reflected Amity, the company that, you know, I built with my co-founders. We are very international team. My two co-founders are Tai, I am Italian, and the company has five global offices. So we are spread, you know, really across the globe. We, we have our r and d is based in Bangkok, and we have offices in London, Milan, San Francisco. We are opening up in Sao Paulo. So we are very, you know, global and multicultural team.

Wade Erickson (03:04):

Great, great. Alright, well, let's jump into the topic decoding app engagement and monetization. You know, I, I, as I looked at the site you, I think given your background, you, you have a strong feeling, feeling for community sites, social engagement sites and those kind of things. And often they struggle to get funding through various means, and, and your application is really an assistance to them. So, so let's jump into the topic and tell us a little bit about how you approach the market with your product offering and, and, and some of the things that, based on your background that maybe caused you to be interested in this.

Francesca Gargaglia (03:48):

Sure. I mean, I've always been very passionate about communities and digital communities in particular. I think that communities are, you know, an essential element of our society. And you know, having the internet really magnified the positive impact that communities can have in the life of anyone. They really, you know, allow us to connect with people that share our same interests and have, you know, experience a sense of belonging in many cases. Also, you know, this translate into having many positive impact of on, on our longevity, on our wellbeing. So this is something that as a, you know as a myself and passionate about. But what I started to notice, that is probably also one of the thinking that then eventually led to Amity and to build this product, is the fact that, you know, social media monopolize online communities. So in 99% of the cases as users, when we want to engage, you know, with people that share our same interests or we want to, you know, find information concerning a brand or an organization that we are part of, we will do so in social media platforms. So it can be Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, there are multiples out there, but the experience that we, we have on these platforms is not necessarily the best. And this both from, you know, a user's perspective and from the brand perspective, why I am saying so, because obviously the interest of social media, the way they monetize is just increasing engagement, right? And, and really keeping people very, very stuck to the screens, but they don't necessarily have an interest on monitoring the quality of the contents or the interaction that users have, right? And this very often, you know, means that users have very fragmented experience. So imagine that you want to join, you know, the group Facebook group around one of your favorite organizations, but you don't really know who is moderating it, who is honing it, if all the people that should be in there have actually been invited. So in general, you know, as user, I started to be very frustrated with my experience on, you know online communities powered by social media being very low quality. So there is a lot of spam. There are, you know, a lot of haters. Very often there is misinformation. And I started to notice that this same frustration is very often shared by the brands. So, you know, the brands, the organizations, they don't feel that they are really controlling the quality of, you know, the experience that they are giving to their users and their communities, right? And this comes also with, you know, a lot of consequences and potential negative implications for the brand. So this was the starting point of really, you know, starting to think, Hey, there might be a better model for, you know, online communities. And we might actually try to provide a safer, a more curated, a more meaningful alternative. And this is kind of, you know, really the mission that, that we have at Amity. We say that our mission is to, to power to create positive digital communities and experiences. And this is something that we do by enabling anyone, companies, organizations, even individuals potentially to, you know, launch very easily their curated and safe digital communities by giving them the technology to do so. So what we do at am d is that we, you know, provide all the very sophisticated features that usually you need for a community to be launched and also to be engaging for the users. So think all the features that you can find in, you know very famous social media from the ability for users to chat, to have a profile, to join discussion forums, all the way to more engaging you know, video formats. For example, live streaming or video stories. So the same, you know, the same set of capabilities that allow you to define an app, a social app, or a community app. This is something that Amity provides to, you know, anyone on a plug and play format. So we, we provide this capabilities, 95% ready, so is a set of SDKs and APIs in technical languages. So we are providing the backend. This comes also with, you know, access to UI kits that can be, you know, used to very easily integrate, you know, these capabilities into the customer app, which translate into the possibility to launch, you know, a fully functioning digital community in a fraction of the time that it would take to code this from scratch, right? So we are really making, you know, this kind of technology accessible to anyone. You don't need to have a huge budget. You don't need to have a huge development team. You don't need, you know, to have a limited resources to actually access this type of technology. So it's a very, very innovative angle that we are trying to pursue. By also, you know allowing brands to drive, you know, to, to bring some of the engagement that currently, you know, they have on social media back to their own apps and, and digital platforms, right? Just by integrating our technology. So I think that another very important angle for me and for our customers is that every time that, you know, engagement happens on a third party social media platform, of course, this platform owns the data. So there is very little control over how these data are managed, and you know how they are used, right? Because they, they also, you know, of course they, they generate advertising. There are a lot of interest involved. So for our customers, a very important piece, you know, of, of importance of what Amity provide is for them to actually be able to bring this engagement and this data back into safety and into their own platforms. So this makes the product also very appealing and very applicable for organizations that, you know are very, very concerned about the privacy of the, you know, of their members and or, or the confidentiality of, of the conversations that happen on the platform, right? So imagine anything from, you know, community attached to big hospital groups or insurances or, you know, organization like the World Economic Forum or, you know not-for-profit organization that are, you know, working on human rights or on health issues. So this, you know, makes Oso a perfect solution for them because it, you know, it serves the two purposes of boosting engagement and really allowing you to power your white label social network, but at the same time also allowing you to keep the data protected, right? So this is, I would say the, the main angle, of course, every time that, you know, the brand or the organization as access to this data and you know, as the ability to really get to know their customer in a way that was not necessarily available before, right? So this applies to customers, applies to members, and this, you know, makes them able to also improve substantially the quality of the service or the relationship that they provide to their members, right? So they can, you know, be very proactive in understanding user's pain points. They can be very proactive in understanding, you know potential directions for pro product development. So we want our community to become, you know, our Amity power community to become for our customer, really a sounding board, and to inspire older business decision making just looking, you know, at data-driven strategies to actually enact the input that they get from the community. So this is something that we, we make very, very easy for them via AI. So we have, you know technology that we call social insight that allows, you know, customers to see real time very important piece, you know, of engagement data and also social insights. So inputs on how this data can be translated into actual business value by improving the quality of the relationship with, you know, the, the users and the community members. And this naturally leads also in for-profit businesses, sometimes in a lot of new ways to potentially monetize, right? And to unlock new revenues, because you can know very early, for example, what new product would be interest you know, interesting for, for your community to get access to. You can survey immediately your community, you can get very quick feedback on for, for example, potential product directions. So of course, when you strengthen the relationship with, with your users and, and you invest in this relationship, this translate into incredible brand value. So we see, you know, every time that the MT technology is added to any app, no matter, you know, who is the brand or the, the organization owning that app it into increased engagement, into increased retention stickiness, and ultimately always to increase revenues. So this is a bit, you know, my approach, Amit's approach to the topic and, and how we are, you know, going when we think of up engagement and monetization. So using social features to really make an app super relevant for the users, and super exciting for them to, to actually spend time on, because you can add value, the experience is curated, is positive, is protected somehow. And this on the other end translate, you know, what is a very, very high quality user experience for us translate into, you know, the ability to unlock so much growth potential to, for the brands, right?

Wade Erickson (13:37):

So a lot to unpack there. The so I kind of envisioned this journey if I was to be a consumer of your services and products that maybe I started out with a blog and then that went to a website, but that's largely just textual and video. And then if I wanted to build community, I'd have to go and maybe open a Facebook page or something like that. And that's the pivot into their monetization process, right? Where now Facebook is really benefiting from my community, whereas you guys now have said, I'm jumping in there, you now don't have to go and use a social platform. You can keep the people in your space, but yet add all those nice features of chatting and posting and all the kinds of features we like social media but, but keep it within the context of your community. And then that monetization piece, whether it's outside vendors that might sell materials that are relevant, let's say it's a gardening community or something. So then now you could sell, you know, fertilizers or whatever, you know, through that, and then that a piece of that would then benefit the, the community's funding and stuff. So I, I don't know if I've seen any other folks doing this. Are you pretty unique in the space in this where. You kind of can pivot people off of the social media and kind of ma manage that into their own autonomous world?

Francesca Gargaglia (15:21):

So I think what makes Amity very unique, I mean, we are not, definitely not the first you know, the, the first company out there that allows people to, you know, to have white label social, social media features. So the different, and what makes Amity very unique is that the other companies out there usually approach this as giving, you know standalone community app that can be very easily, you know, customized to some extent by the user. But it's a product that is very static, right? Because it's a pre-built, you know, ready to use software that the, the client will have, will have to adapt to. So Amity comes from a different standpoint. Amity, cells, you know, pre-built social and community capabilities that have to be plugged to an existing Apple website. So this is like the equivalent of selling, you know, building blocks, like really? I like to do the sample of Lego pieces, right? So this means that we are selling infrastructure that allows the customer to very easily build a social network that is a hundred percent owned by them. So it's not a SaaS technically it's a infrastructure as a service company, because we are really se selling a piece of code, right? So this has a lot of benefits. The first is the absolute flexibility and customization because to communities that are built, you know, using AFI set very, very hardly look the same, or it's possible to spot that these, you know, pieces are provided by a third party. But also, again, Amity doesn't own it, it's just a vendor supplying pieces of it, right? And the name experience, but the customer owns it and owns all the related data. So in this sense, I would say Amity is very unique. And there's also the reason why this product is also appealing you know, to big enterprises, because big enterprises very often have already apps, And they already invested probably millions of dollars in bringing, you know, in building these apps. And of course, they are not very, you know, attracted by the idea of, you know, using another community platform and, and, you know, introducing a new platform in their ecosystem that they're already struggling to manage. So where Amity come in is actually enabling to, you know, add social media features into their own you know, existing app. And this of course make the process more, you know, smoother for them.

Wade Erickson (17:41):

And, and you get to maintain all your own branding and, and all of that flexibility. So yeah, that's very important when you have made investments to really kind of create your appearance and look and feel. And I, I've definitely seen those social community apps that were very self-contained, and you, they were basically just website platforms that have the features. And you, other than I framing them in, it was, you know, you know, like you said, a lot of extra effort just to add those features versus your far more granular in, in its introduction. And you can, you know, take pieces of it, you know, like you said, video.

Francesca Gargaglia (18:21):

Excellent.

Wade Erickson (18:22):

Separate with chat now. And I think about, you know, where things are going with you know, conversational chat and all those kinds of things. This is just a much more rich, interactive experience than just putting in a chat bot or something like that. So this is a much farther, much more rich interaction with the potential community that that whether it's a support community of your own company, right, or, or a social community, yeah. You, it has multiple flavors. Very, very intriguing. So you know, as AI's coming here and you know, it's building, you know, everybody thinks you'll be able to prompt your way into websites, right? And I think we're still a long ways away from that. Having these kind of pluggable technologies you know, I think you guys are very well prepared for that, because it'll build out the core site if we ever get to that. But then you can build in, now does it work with native like iOS and Android as well? Oh, wow. So you can do web and native that's very.

Francesca Gargaglia (19:30):

Native as the case for, you know, multiple platforms and coding languages.

Wade Erickson (19:35):

That's, that's very powerful then.

Francesca Gargaglia (19:38):

At the moment.

Wade Erickson (19:39):

So, tell me a little bit about the vendors. So let's talk about the monetization piece and the stores. I think some folks would kind of say, Hey, is this like the tying into Amazon, or, or is there other more curated vendors that have specific product lines, or maybe even have some social ties to being more eco-friendly? Tell me a little bit about how you pull together vendors that have stuff to sell that then is shared with the communities platform owners.

Francesca Gargaglia (20:12):

Absolutely. I think we have, you know, multiple models multiple go to market models. A huge chunk of our, you know, of our sales are still, you know, direct sales. So the, the number one, you know, channel of regeneration it is still inbound. Because as you said, being a, you know, a relatively new product with not many competitor out there, at least that we are aware of it's relatively easy to find us if you are already looking for something similar, right? So we have you know, a lot of attention in taking care, nurturing these leads and converting them into Epic customers. And we have a good success rate in doing so. But of course, we also do work with partners and vendors to make sure that, you know, we accelerate in general the growth that, that we have particularly in in new markets, right? So we do it in a multi of, you know, models. So the, the more standard one we do have, we, we are part of a few marketplaces. So we collaborate, for example, with one of our main partners is AWS, so Amit is a product on the AWS marketplace. We have a similar setup with other marketplaces around the world. For example, national in the US is a, a good partner of Amity. So there is the possibility for customers to actually find out about Amity via a different platform. AWS is also, you know, our cloud provider. So we have a very, very deep partnership with them. And, you know, they are very instrumental for us in reaching, you know, certain accounts. We do have more basic referral partners. And these are companies mostly, so our vendors that offer to their customer solutions that are very complimentary to ours. So for example, they offer different type of SDKs and APIs, so subscription APIs, payment APIs. So it's the same type of target users. They are also selling into apps. They are also helping, you know, the apps owners to enhance the experience in their application. So for this reason, we always create this win-win, you know, kind of strategy where we can, you know, refer customers to each other and create, you know, this high quality collaboration. And the last, you know, model, which we are developing more and more right now is actually the model where we provide our capabilities, either in a white label way or, or not, but they go and integrate in a bigger vendor ecosystems, for example, you know, as you said, we are evaluating, you know, having native even integration with Shopify. We are, you know in discuss with a series of app building no code, low code or no code app and website building platforms where we want to be able to provide these capabilities, right? So it is it's really, it's really horizontal. It's also very much you know, related to the fact that our product is industry agnostic. So as long as you have an app, right, we can add value no matter which type of industry you're working with, so that it's reflected in our vendors' acquisition strategy.

Wade Erickson (23:29):

Great. Great. So we're already getting near to the end of the show. This is where I like to pivot though and talk about a little bit about your personal journey through your career and wow, reading your experience. I, I was very impressed with, with, you know, how you, so you have a legal background. So I saw you have a, a legal lawyer kind of background, and you worked with a lot of NGOs and United Nations and all these different countries and, you know, just kind of a renaissance person. And then you wind up starting a software company. And so there's got to be a great story behind how you pivoted to that. And you know, having a business that's in multiple continence in the world kind of helps to keep that traveling going, I'm sure. But tell me a little bit about how you went from school to non, you know, kind of governments liaison work in different countries and then came to, to start Amity.

Francesca Gargaglia (24:37):

Absolutely, with pleasure. I mean, as, as you correctly said, I have a legal background. I went to law school I studied international law, and, you know, I always wanted to try as many things as possible during my, you know, college years and university years to make sure that I would, made an informed choice about my, you know, future career. So I was immediately attracted, you know, from the human rights and NGO awards. So I had the, the honor and the pleasure to, you know, experience working with NGOs in Brazil, in Indonesia, and I have to say is an experience that I really loved. But I very soon realized that I couldn't, you know, imagine myself pursuing this career in the long term for a series of reasons, but mostly because these organizations are very often massive. And by the time, you know, there is a lot of bureaucracy, everything is very process driven. And I felt that I could probably contribute more to some of the topics that I really passionate about coming actually for a, for-profit angle and coming actually from a CSR and, and, you know a really foundation, probably corporate foundation angle which is what led me to actually try the business side of things and made my first experience in the corporate world. And I wanted to keep a very open mind and, you know, try to experience as much as possible, which led me to, to starting consulting. So I joined PWC, and I started in their consulting, in their legal consulting division at first, and then migrating into, migrated into peer consulting. And inside the company, I mean, it's such a big organization, so they gave me the opportunity to really, you know, try different things and, and also ask myself the question, what do I want to do? And the response was immediately, okay, I want to try, you know, travel as much as possible and experience different, you know, work environments. So they offered me the opportunity to move to Africa, which was you know, amazing, but I was only 23 years old at time, so it was also a big challenge for me. And that's how I landed in Johannesburg. And I was supposed to be there on a six months assignment. I ended up staying over two years, and they put me in charge of this amazing project that was called European Desk. So we were building their, you know, a consulting like assistance desk for European companies of any size that wanted to expand and try to, you know, enter the Africa market. So this for me was incredible because I got, you know, when I was very young, I got to work, you know, firsthand with so many entrepreneurs that wanted to build something, or they wanted to, you know, expand their business. And this inspired me so much because I saw that, you know, incredible passion and love for the product and really, you know, also the, the ability to get their hands dirty and have, you know, a medium to long-term vision. And what I was not enjoying about the p corporate world and the consulting in particular is that you constantly work on different projects and accounts. So you are never, you know, assigned to an account long enough to really see, you know, how certain strategies are going to evolve or affect, you know, the, the plans of the business. So I made the decision, I mean, I knew that I wanted to try something different, and the possibility was presented to me by meeting that is my co-founder. And this is a very random story that, that, you know, leads then to LinkedIn, email LinkedIn messages exchange, but, you know, things follow things. And after, you know, six months from our first conversation, I was just born a flight to Thailand and I was accepting to, to join his, a very early stage business and try to, to grow it with him. So that wasn't Amity to be honest, it was another startup that Cowa started before Amity that I joined as a, you know, head of strategy. And then, you know, a few years later we, we kind of add the idea for launching a new product to together, and that, you know, the, the rest is what we discussed today.

Wade Erickson (28:49):

Great. Well, that's, that's exciting. So you and that, that's important I think, to young people to do is constantly question, am I where I want to be, right? And it's okay to change, it's okay to pivot because, you know you experienced all kinds of different locations all over the world, different cultures, and you know, people can still do that in their local communities. Of course it's more exciting to do it like you did. So but yeah, you know, you found, you found the, the passion and love for owning your own business and the excitement of that. And of course, all your international experience, I'm sure played a great role in that. Well, we're kind of ended time. I want to do announce next week's show before we wrap. And so next week is Andrew Knight, principal architect at Cycle Labs, Wednesday the 12th. And Cycle Labs is a comprehensive test automation platform, which of course is very close to what Logger does it having our history and testing as well. So it'll be an interesting conversation with him and how he sees the world of test software testing going in the future. So join us next Wednesday the 12th for that interesting conversation. So Francesca, again, wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed understanding, appreciating your approach to the market. I think it's a very, very valuable component, especially to those that built sites to, to, to largely engage with a sector of our community. And then you just fast tracked it to be a much more rich, interactive offering without forcing people to leave their, their own sites. And yeah, I'm, I'm excited. There's, there's probably some places that I can recommend what you guys are doing to expand other people's sites that are largely just informational websites and stuff like that.

Francesca Gargaglia (30:54):

Thank you very much.

Wade Erickson (30:56):

All right, well, everybody else until next week have a good week.